


Arise and See

by Elder_Schraderham



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Gen, Villains
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 03:29:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10778628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elder_Schraderham/pseuds/Elder_Schraderham
Summary: There hasn't been an active superhero or a super villain in Philadelphia since the 80's, but that doesn't mean that super humans don't exist. They do, and a handful of them are sitting inside a bar in South Philly. Two for good, one for evil, one who doesn't know it yet, and one who could care less. The poor city of Philadelphia is in for it...





	Arise and See

It was an oddly warm day for Pennsylvania in early March. But then again, nothing about Pennsylvania’s weather made any lick of sense, no matter what the month or season. Even in South Philly it was comfy. Comfy enough to be working in a shady alleyway behind a bar. 

That’s what Mac was doing. Surrounded by boxes and bins of papers and important documents while a trash fire burned in front of him, in the middle of a shady alleyway that couldn’t be reached by the sun. At least the heat of the fire was warming to the man in a muscle tank top in front of it as he continuously fed the fire. The first day the thermometer hits above sixty, everyone freaks out and goes for the shorts and tank tops because it’s going to be a scorcher. And today was the day Mac didn’t expect to be asked to go outside and burn stuff.

He had just dumped a box of nonsense into the trash fire when Charlie walked outside with two large black trash bags in each hand.

“They let you burn shit?” Charlie asked, arching an eyebrow at his friend.

“It was more like _we_ didn’t want _you_ burning shit,” Mac then explained. 

The two stared at each other for a moment before Charlie spoke up. “Can I throw stuff in?”

“Yeah, sure,” he shrugged. Charlie then took his trash bags and started to throw it in the trash fire. Mac spoke up again. “Throw those in the dumpster, not in the fire.”

Charlie grumbled to himself as he lugged the bags to the other side of the alleyway and tossed them into the dumpster, fighting the urge to jump in to see what bountiful goodies he could find in there. Fire was more important, and calling out to him subconsciously. It had been a good long while since the two of them had had a trash burning and he was not going to pass up this opportunity. 

The last one, that Charlie could remember, them doing a trash burn was back in tenth grade. But he couldn’t remember exactly why they stopped and he didn’t really want to ask Mac why either. Odds were, they just stopped and that was that. 

“Just find a box and throw papers in. For the love of God, only paper. Nothing else,” Mac explained, emphasizing only paper in the fire.

“What the hell are some of these?” Charlie asked, routing through one of the boxes.

“Receipts, flyers from who knows where, important documents that need to be forgotten, miscellaneous shit. Anything you can imagine that needs to be destroyed.”

“Whoa, check this out.” Charlie pulled up a piece of paper. “It looks important.”

Mac plucked the paper from Charlie’s hand, expecting it to be something meaningless or stupid like a flyer for a street show or open mic night. He was not expecting it to actually be important. After a brief scan over the document, and Charlie breathing down his arm attempting to read it, Mac decided to read it aloud for his friend to actually understand what it said.

“Listen to this dude, it came from New York City,” Mac cleared his throat before beginning to read it. “ _Dear Mr. Reynolds, thank you for your detective work done for the insider trading debacle in the New York stock exchange last May_. Blah, blah, blah, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit… Whoa! _New York needs great superheroes like you again. Please consider this our warm welcome to become New York City’s newest superhero_. Dude, Frank is a super human!”

“What? No way, man. You think I wouldn’t know if he was or wasn’t?” Charlie gave him a ‘really dude’ sort of look. “We live together. He’d’ve told me… right?”

“I don’t know,” Mac shrugged, looking over the document again. “Let’s be real, this could be legit for a second though. Philly hasn’t had a superhero or super villain since we were in elementary school. There’s a chance that there’s still a bunch of them in hiding, or even moved to more populated cities where they’re needed.”

“If the ones we even had were from Philly.” Charlie then noted.

“Also possible.”

“Isn’t the super human gene passed down from generation to generation too?” Charlie questioned.

“It can, yeah. At least, what I know about it. Come on dude, who do you really thing would have it?”

“Anything’s possible, man.”

Mac nodded. “Yeah, that’s true.” Paper still in hand, Mac crumbled it up into a little ball and tossed it in the fire.

When the document fell into the fire, the fire seemed to explode as if someone had dropped a paint can or something compressed into the flames. Mac and Charlie fell to the ground to keep from getting severely hurt and burned. They held their hands over their heads to protect their faces on the cold, damp, concrete of the alley. Once it seemed like the coast was clear, Mac peeked first. 

He patted himself down, seeing no signs of burns or damage to himself at all. As he went to open his mouth, he saw that Charlie’s bomber jacket was on fire.

“Dude! You’re jacket’s on fire!” Mac exclaimed, getting Charlie’s immediate attention.

Charlie pushed himself off the ground and haphazardly attempted to unzip the jacket to get it off. He wasn’t really getting anywhere in a moment of panic, and Mac saw this. Not thinking, just as his friend was, Mac decided to aid his friend and use his bare hands to pat down the flame. 

Instead of patting the flame and extinguishing the fire with small amounts of pain and maybe a slight burn with bare hands, something different and unexpected happened. When Mac put his hand over the flame, it seemed to jump off of Charlie’s jacket and onto his hand. Charlie’s eyes widened at what had just happened. His eyes were locked on Mac’s hand that was now holding fire.

It took Mac a second to actually process what had just happened. His hand was on fire and it didn’t hurt. As the flames danced on his palm, it seemed like a warm tickle as if he had just pet a shedding cat. When he did actually realize ‘holy shit my hand is on fire’, he shook his hand violently as if to just sort of shake it away. Shaking away the flame took a bit longer than expected, but finally the fire went out and a wave of relief fell over Mac.

“What the fuck just happened, dude?” Mac exclaimed out of confused frustration.

Charlie was still staring at his friend’s hand that had the flame. He hadn’t broken eye contact the entire time out of shock and confusion. 

“Charlie? Dude!” Mac was now directing these exclamations at his friend, who had seemed to zone out for a minute.

“I’m sorry… I’m just sort of…”

“Me too, dude! What the hell just happened!”

“Does it hurt?”

“Does what hurt?”

“Your hand,” Charlie pointed to his hand that he still hadn’t broken eye contact with.

“My wha-“ Mac began to ask before he actually looked down to inspect his hand. Nothing was wrong with his hand, at all. It wasn’t red from the heat, there were no blisters or burns. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the palm of his hand. “Dude, I’m freaking out here. What the hell is going on?”

“You think _I_ know, dude?” Charlie shouted. “I’m just as confused as you are right now, man. This is some weird shit.”

“You’re telling me!” Mac stood up from the ground and took a few steps back away from the trash fire, still burning in front of them.

Charlie finally managed to tear his gaze away from Mac’s hand and stand up. Shook up from whatever they just endured, Charlie joined Mac away from the fire. The two stood there in silence, just watching the flames dance inside the trashcan. Neither of them knew what to say to what had just happened, so they said nothing. That was until Charlie deiced to pipe up.

“So, what are we going to do about those papers?” Charlie pondered, pointing to the several boxes of shit they still had to get rid of.

“No offense, dude, but I’m still a bit freaked and don’t really want to go near that thing right now.”

“No worries, man. I got you.” Charlie smiled to his friend. 

Before he could take a step towards one of the boxes atop a stack began to hover a few inches off the stack. Charlie and Mac’s eyes both seemed to widen at the same time as they stared at another odd occurrence that they were witnessing. The box floated higher above the stack of boxes before it was hovering directly over the trash fire. Once over the fire, the box began to tip over to dump the contents into the fire. 

Neither of them were moving a muscle as they watched the box then begin to float back down onto the stack of empty boxes Mac was making off to the side. Charlie took a half a step back and was now shoulder to shoulder with his confused friend.

“Mac?” Charlie asked.

“Yeah?”

“One of two things just happened. One, ghosts exist and are haunting our bar and they want us to get out of immediately.”

“And two?”

“Hear me out on this one,” Charlie took a deep breath. “We might be super humans.”

“I’d believe in ghosts before I’d believe that we have super human abilities. And that’s saying something, dude.”

“It makes sense though!”

“Back up,” Mac turned and faced his friend. “Why do you think we have super human abilities?”

“Think for two seconds about what just happened here. Fucking fire jumped off of me and into your hand and didn’t burn the shit out of it or even do any sort of damage. That box of papers just levitated and got dumped into the fire because I was thinking in my head ‘huh, that’d be sweet if I didn’t have to get near the fire’. What does that mean?”

“Dude, we don’t have super human abilities!” Mac groaned loudly.

“And why shouldn’t we? Keep thinking about it, man.”

“About what, Charlie? That our parents have super human abilities that they hid from us all of our lives?”

“I never knew my dad!” Charlie exclaimed. “Who’s to say he didn’t have some sort of ability? That makes sense.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll buy that. But what about me? Do you really think either of my parents had powers?”

“What about your dad?”

“My dad?”

“Yeah. He lied a lot to you growing up, was always sneaking around, doing who knows what. Who’s to say that he didn’t have something?”

Mac actually began to ponder on what his insane friend was babbling about. The more he thought about the whole scenario, the more he thought about his grandmother on his dad’s side. She always seemed a bit off till the day she died. When he would visit her when he was younger, he would always remember how much of a plant enthusiast she was. Mac remembered always seeing plants of all sorts in her house and outside her house. Even once, he could recall seeing a flower grow before his eyes-

“My grandma,” Mac blurted out.

“What?”

“It wasn’t my dad who had an ability, it was my grandma on his side. She could grow plants and shit like Poison Ivy. Sometimes, powers skip generations. Or my dad did have one and hid it from my mom and me… But my grandma did for sure.”

“You believe me?” Charlie questioned.

“I do, yeah. Charlie, I think we have super powers.”

He nodded. “It would seem that we do.”

“Dude, you do know what this means right?” Mac then exclaimed to his friend.

“Uh, we abuse these powers for our own personal gain?” Charlie arched an eyebrow up at Mac.

“No, dude. God gave us these powers so we can do his biding! We can finally earn our way into heaven!”

“You lost me, man.”

“Don’t you see? We can actually do some good around here. Ya know, clean up the streets of Philly and all of that other super hero garbage.”

“You’re really serious about this?” Charlie asked, seeing how his friend was getting over the thought of doing good. “Holy shit you are. Who are you and what have you done with Mac?”

“Charlie.” Mac sighed, giving him a look.

“I’m serious, dude. What happened? Now all of a sudden you’re talking about saving people and doing good shit for people who we don’t know and don’t know if they even deserve this to happen to them?”

“But we won’t go to hell. It could make up for all the shit we’ve done prior that would make us go there.”

“That’s true…”

“Think about it. We have these bitchin powers, we can make our own costumes, team up, and kick stranger’s asses. Are you having trouble processing this?”

“I mean, a little bit… But you're right. It does sound like a good idea. The whole teaming up thing and all…”

Mac gave him another look. “You want kickass costumes, right?”

“Dude, yes!” Charlie exclaimed with a bright smile. “That’s the best part of every superhero!”

“Not even the powers part. Just the costume.”

“Uh, duh.”

“We should sort of learn to control our powers though… Ya know, figure out how they work and shit.”

“Should… Or we can make our cool costumes?” Charlie asked hopefully, smiling sweetly to Mac.

“Basement of Paddy’s?” Mac asked.

“Basement of Paddy’s.” Charlie agreed. Before they could scamper off, Charlie then turned to the trash fire. “We should probably do something about that first.”

Mac nodded sadly and went back over to the trash fire. The two thought that they would try to use their powers to start getting used to them, and to see if they were real or not. Charlie just needed to think of something to be done and it was done. He willed the boxes to be dumped into the fire and then placed in the pile of empty boxes. 

Once Charlie was done that, Mac sort of just stared at the fire with a quizzical expression. He had no idea what to even do to put it out, even if he did have powers. Thinking about what Charlie said earlier, he was going to imagine the fire dissipating. He thought long and hard about it and decided to make a hand movement where he wiped his arms to the sides. To his utter surprise, the flames were out. 

The two exchanged eager smiles before they then bolted into the bar. Dennis had been behind the bar while his twin sister Dee sat across from him on a bar stool. The two had been arguing about something meaningless when the two ran in from outside. When Charlie and Mac ran into the bar, the twins had ceased arguing and turned their attention to the other two.

Dee arched an eyebrow at the two, but Dennis spoke up first. “What are you two so happy about?”

“Dude! Me and Mac-“ Charlie began to excitedly blab to their friends before Mac elbowed him in the chest to shut him up. He took it as a sign to stop talking about what happened and began to lie instead. “Me and Mac were gonna head into the basement and check the rat traps.”

“The two of you?” Dennis asked suspiciously, gesturing between the two of them. “Mac, you’re too good for Charlie work.”

“Yeah, I know, but he asked me to help him out. Besides, someone has to keep him from eating the old cheese from the traps.”

“How can I not, dude?” Charlie then faced his friend, bummed out that he couldn’t partake in a snack and completely forgetting about their recent discovery of powers that seemed to take a backseat to the new conversation at hand.

“No, that’s really smart of you,” Dee noted. “Remember the last time that Charlie ate the cheese off the traps?”

“Oh right. We found him in the basement in a little ball on the floor, shaking in a puddle of his own piss…”

“Yeah, dude, do you remember what happened? Like, at all?” Mac asked.

“Nope.” Charlie shook his head.

“Haunting…” Dennis trailed off before turning back to his sister. “As I was saying…”

Before Charlie and Mac knew it, the twins were back to their usual argument. Awkwardly standing there now, the two just looked at each other before Mac pointed to the stairs to the basement to indicate that they should go down. Slowly, they crept towards the door as they continued to listen into the twin’s argument. 

Mac opened the door and ushered Charlie down first before following him, shutting the door behind him. Charlie jumped down the last few steps to find the light switch. Paddy’s basement was huge. Alarmingly huge. It was large enough to be a sweat shop. It would be large enough so the two could practice with their new discovered powers and make their costumes.

“Charlie, try to see if you can turn on that light on the far side of the basement!” Mac happily exclaimed as he joined his friend at the bottom of the stairs.

Charlie stared intently at a darken wall across the basement where he knew another light switch was. Concentrating intently at the area, he willed the switch to flip up and turn the light on. And he’d be damned if it didn’t work. The darken side of the basement illuminated with light from the switch that Charlie made flip on. 

Excited that it worked, he ran over to the other side to see if the switch was turned on. When he got over there, he threw both hands in the air in a celebration. “Holy shit it worked!”

“Alright, man!” Mac exclaimed. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Charlie caught a glimpse of an old bucket that he used to throw old rags in that he used for cleaning. He picked up the metal bucket and brought it over to Mac and set it down on the ground by him.

“Dude, totally set these rags on fire.”

“But why these?”

“I’m sorry, can you make fire come out of your hands like the Human Torch or not? What’s not to love about fires? Just do it, dude.”

He shrugged, not really sure what to even do. It wasn’t like Charlie’s telekinesis where he could just will things with his mind do move or do shit. Like, did he imagine a fire in his hand or what? Or was it a Hulk thing where he had to get really pissed off at something to summon a flame. Or was it a Warren Peace thing from the Disney movie Sky High, that he had seen one too many times on Dennis’ Netflix account, where he had to almost simulate a bic lighter.

In the process of overthinking how to make a fire on his hand, he had already began to summon a flame on the palm of his hand. Hell, he didn’t even know it was there until Charlie said something. More like yelled.

“Dude! Holy shit, you’re doing it!”

That’s when he directed his attention to the flame on his hand. A slight bit of panic came over him as he saw the palm of his hand on fire again. He shook it off and it fell right into the bucket and the entire bucket of rags went up in flames, causing the two to jump back in surprise. Charlie yelped at the sizable flame in the relatively small bucket.

The two panicked as they heard the basement door open and footsteps bound down the stairs. Dennis and Dee were standing on the bottom few steps, looking at the two and the fire bucket between them.

“What the hell are you two doing?”

“Oh, uh, I was smoking and went to put out my cig in this bucket… Turns out there were flammable objects in there.” Mac shrugged, hands behind his back in case there were any remnants of ash or flames still on his hand.

“Right…” Dennis nodded.

Dee, on the other hand, was not so accepting of the lie. She could tell that there was more to what was going on than the two seemed. They were hiding something, and she wanted to know what. Dennis, on the other hand, couldn’t care less. He spun around and went to go back up the stairs and groaned when Dee wouldn’t move. Instead of asking her to move, he began to push her back up the stairs. 

Once they heard the door shut, they let out a breath of relief in unison.

“That was close,” Mac noted, inspecting his hand that was just recently on fire.

“Really close. Want me to try and lock the door?” Charlie asked.

“That might make them suspicious to something being up.”

“But this needs to be our secret lair. No one else can know about this, you said so yourself.”

“Well, yeah, but-“

“But what, dude? Are you having second thoughts on this whole thing already?”

“Man, I don’t know how to use these damn powers! I don’t even know how I set that on fire!” He exclaimed, gesturing to the fire in the bucket.

“What were you thinking about?”

“Thinking about what the hell to do to summon a flame!”

“Well whatever it was, it worked.”

“But I don’t know _how_ , dude. I thought of like fourteen different ways that it could work and I didn’t even realize it was going until you said something. It’s not as easy as telekinesis.”

“I’m not even sure how I got tellakhan…”

“Tele-kin-esis.”

“Tele…kin…esis. Telekinesis.”

Mac nodded. “Yes, telekinesis.”

“I got a power I don’t even know how to say!”

“You can move shit with your mind, dude. That’s still pretty awesome.”

“Weird. Dude, I wish I got your power though. Summoning elements and shit? That’s some _Avatar_ shit, man!”

“If I knew how to use it!”

“Don’t sweat it dude, you’ll figure it out. Somehow.” Charlie then paused and gave him a weird look. “Did it like… hurt? When it was on your hand like that? Is that why you panicked? Cause it was the second time you did that.”  
“No, that’s the thing. It didn’t hurt. My mind thought that it should hurt so it reacted to a flame being on my hand. It felt like… I don’t know. It was just warm and kinda tickled.”

“I have an idea. Put your hand in the bucket.”

“What?” Mac gave him a strange look. “Put my hand? In a bucket? That’s on fire?”

Charlie nodded profusely. “Yeah! See if fire really does hurt. Or touch the bucket first. Test to see if your vulnerable to heat too!”

“Doesn’t hurt to try.”

“I mean, it might, but go for it!” Charlie gave him a double thumbs up.

That was good enough for Mac. He shrugged and knelt down next to the bucket. In his mind he knew that there should be intense heat coming off of the burning bucket, but there wasn’t. First, he put his hand on the metal exterior of the bucket to feel warmth. To his surprise, there was none. It felt like a normal, room temperature, bucket. Curious now, he put his hand into the fire and felt nothing. Like it was a normal empty bucket. 

“Dude.” Charlie gasped.

“This is freaky…”

“Are you kidding me? That’s awesome!” He exclaimed. “Dude, try to pick up some flames!”

Mac shrugged and pulled a Ghost Rider and scooped up a bit of the fire and stood up. Shockingly, the fire stayed in his hand the entire time. It didn’t hurt him at all, all it did was tickle a bit. Feeling powerful, and a bit cocky by this point, he looked across the room at the brick wall. Iron Man plasma blast style, he launched the fireball at the wall. The ball of flames flew threw the air before exploding and dissipating on the brick wall across the room. 

Charlie’s eyes were wide with awe. “Dude. Holy shit. That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!” He then began to jump up and down from pure excitement. 

“That was awesome!”

“This is amazing, dude. Holy shit, we’re actually going to be super heroes!”

Mac smiled at the sudden realization of what Charlie said. They were actually going to do it, they were going to be real life super heroes. “We’re going to be the best god damn super heroes Philly has ever seen.”

**Author's Note:**

> Been playing around with this for a few weeks in the form of drabbles. It feels nice to actually put it into an actual fic.


End file.
